We Are All Impostors
by Cuz I'm Nice Like That
Summary: AU In FTL Regina is yet to kill King Leopold and King George visits, bringing David along with him as his faux heir. Staying at the Summer Palace David, somehow someway, ends up in the Queen's chambers. They share an interesting chat in front of the fire.


**_*READ* Summary: AU/FTL Regina is yet to kill King Leopold and King George visits, bringing David along with him. They stay in the castle and somehow someway he ends up in the Queen's chambers and they share a chat. Dark in tone but not in content. _**

_I know that everything happened for a reason and it was setup a certain way but just go along with it-Ignore the story-line discontinuities please._

_**If there are any-Typos will be revised tomorrow when it's not mad early in the morning lol __Dedicated to my buddy __**parrilla-adkins**__! _

_-__**iiwasalwaysthequeen**_

The room filled with an orange hue as black shadows traveled against the length of the walls. Silence was peace between the shy Queen and the tender Prince, both beaten by their memories. His presence in her chambers is unseemly, they know, but the precepts of royalty ceased to matter in the passing of time. In the inevitable seconds that came and went, titles burned as ashes in the fire that roared before them. Lacking the burdens of any standard, they were just battered souls sitting in front of a flame that illuminated their features.

"Do you believe in hope?" It is the failing of strength in his voice that pressed a bitter smile to her lips. Hair falling like matte rivers along her shoulders, an iron rod plays against her fingers. The gesture fades and her eyes dance to the pattern of the rug they sit upon, following faintly with the tip of a rod. "You're an impostor."

Her words falter his thinking, trip his ego. Bereft of feeling, she speaks to him as though her words will pass through him and fade into existence. There is no filter to suppress her thoughts, for her thoughts are just that-thoughts. Mere procreations of the imagination that no one bothers to account for. Her thoughts, her opinions are rare to be valued, so she speaks as if each time it is her last. A desperate attempt to be heard even if no one is listening.

His silence pulls her actions to fruition and she reaches at him without hesitation. Her fingers hover over his covered ankle, waiting for his mind to react, for his body to register. When he does not flinch, thimble fingers tug at the hem of his sleeping garments and expose a bleak ankle. "You are an impostor."

"You are repeating yourself." Her eyes stop dancing and the rod does not trace the pattern that it lies against. As the silence passes, she exposes him to her eyes, dark trances of brown that lack the light of her past. They are wistful orbs that hold more of a story than what is whispered amongst the townspeople at the market. There is pain, there is loss, there is yearn-he recognizes her troubles but fails to know the cause.

"You are not Prince James." A knowing glance passes his way and there is no use of forging a lie when the truth lays before them. "A handsome man with an abhorrent attitude." Her eyes begin to dance again and he loses the contact that she had allowed him. Instead, she chooses to acknowledge the tapestry and leave him to look upon her features. "You are kind-obstinate, but still..kind." The flame begins to flicker and the rod is reached out, poking at the orange hues that bent and swayed. "The bone of his ankle." Her head inclined to his foot and he tucked it beneath him, hiding the naked skin behind his sleeping attire. "-it bares a birthmark."

"How do you-" The faux strength that he had built lacked in her presence, crumbling at her wisdom. Her stare penetrates what King George had placed around him, placed upon him. She sees the burden, and beyond that, she sees him. "How do you know that?"

"I value knowledge." It is a simple statement that leaves him with more questions than the answers wanted. "Knowledge only completes it's purpose when it is yet to be learned by everyone. When it becomes common-it's no longer knowledge.-just peasantry whispers at the morning well."

He presses her, hoping to meet her eyes again, to gauge her thoughts by the tempest of her stare. He was a man of the peasantry, a man whose mother would make her trips to the well at dawn and be able to commune over the village gossip until dusk. The conflict clouds over the blue of his eyes and she caps his thoughts. "Knowledge is power."

"Then what is weakness?" He wonders if her mind is squarely split, seeing that knowledge works superiorly so that those missing due process are weak, despite their circumstances. In spite of the reason, their lack bereaves them to weakness.

"Love."

The leg that lacked a birthmark, that was weak in royalty stretched in front of him and she misses the incredulity that masks his features for she doesn't care to look at him. A girl's love for the place of a mother cost a child her freedom. A man's love for holding a woman at night cost a child their body. A mother's love for her child cost them their life.

Her life.

She was a barren soul, stripped of the freedom to live, a body to love and a destiny to hope for. She was destitute in a kingdom filled with riches, in a castle built upon wealth. The loves of others had left her down-trodden, with only knowledge to sustain her. She now knew how to manipulate. She now knew how to expose weakness. She now knew how to protect herself. She now knew that as long as the King's chest rose and fell, she would not have her freedom, nor her body, nor her life.

Knowledge is Power.

Love is Weakness.

The ends of his lips lift as though her sentiments are superficial, her mind warped. He is graced with her eyes in return and the chill that resides in them dull the heat from the flames. "I don't wish to be mocked."

"I-I'm not, I-" He loses her to the rug again and her eyes dance, leaving him to stir in his ramblings and think before speaking. "You called me an impostor."

"And?"

"_You _mocked _me_."

"I merely exposed you-You _are _an impostor." Rod to fiber, fiber to rod, she traces the patterns that swirl and curve to their heart's content. Even they possess more freedom than she. "We are _all_ impostors." It is without a filter that she speaks with him, that she imparts within him things that will eerily haunt him. "This world is a masquerade," she sets the rod aside and shining eyes pierce his own, holding a burden too large to bare but too delicate to share. "We attend the ball in identities of our own choosing- of other's choosing. We eat, we sing, we laugh, we dance, but no one knows-_truly_-who is behind the mask-_who_ we eat with, _who_ we sing with, _who_ we laugh with, _who_ we dance with...We don't know." The light has left her eyes, and the fire simmers upon the logs, leaving the Prince with more than he could handle. He is not ready to see behind the mask, and this she knows.

They both know.

"I'm going to retire." A foot presses on the floor and it squeaks in retaliation as she stands, hair falling down the side of her shoulder in an ebony pour. "I suggest you do the same."

He stands but he is not done. "You never answered me." He had spent the night in the Queen's chambers and though they had done nothing but pick the thoughts of their brain, his actions were nonetheless scandalous, "Knowledge is power, love is weakness and we are all impostors-I get it. This world is-it's what it is, but do you-" he needs to know, "Do you believe in hope?"

Can she long passed the lack of freedom? Can she wish with no control? Can she dream passed the lack of her own destiny? Her actions are precise in candor, a hand reaching to turn down her bed as a tired Prince looked upon her in a nightgown meant for the eyes of the King. "I'm going to retire; I suggest _you_ do the same."

"You're repeating yourself again." The pivot of her heels extend her stature and the brown eyes that gaze at him say much more than the mouth that sets in a thin line. He respects her reticence and bends at his waist curtly, eyes never leaving hers. "Good night, your majesty."

She nods and he turns on his heels, wishing away the hum of her doors as they open. "Good night, Prince David." He never told her his name so he pretends as though the words never escaped her and his name is not of her knowledge, not of her power, but mere whispers at the peasantry morning well.

She laid in a bed that held her nightmares, her twists, her turns and she knows the answer to his question; but she does not burden him with it because unlike her own, there is still light in his eyes. To her, hope is only for those who can see past the darkness.

And that, she can no longer do.

**~X~**

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